jueves, 17 de septiembre de 2015

Are MEPs human?

A collection of 200 portraits was unveiled on 14 September at the European Parliament's Esplanade in Brussels. The photos are part of an exhibition organised by EU40 called "Like You", which aims to show the human side of politicians by placing their pictures next to pictures of ordinary citizens.

"The whole idea", said MEP Daniel Dalton, "is for people to have a look and see if they can work out which ones are the politicians and which ones aren't".

An additional 600 photos can be found online, where visitors can also take a quiz to test how many MEPs they can recognize. The exhibition's creators said that no one has yet managed to earn a perfect score on the quiz.

MEPs at the opening of the exhibition admitted that citizens in Europe don't always feel connected to politicians. "It's somehow contradictory", said MEP Pablo Zalba Bidegain, "that in the period of technology, you can send an email in a few seconds to anywhere in the world, but Brussels is too far away from Europe. I think this exhibition helps to make Brussels closer to the citizens".